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“The Grammar of Schooling Defined”

by Alan Jones

 In previous blogs I have used the term, “The Grammar of Schooling,” to describe the classroom routines that teachers throughout our country perform on a daily basis. I use the term to highlight how uniform teaching routines are in this nation—and how these routines act as powerful barriers to instructional approaches that foster deep intellectual engagement with content and skills. The best description of the “grammar of schooling” emerges from John Goodlad’s landmark study of 1,000 classrooms across the United States. Goodlad’s study was carried out more than forty years ago, yet it still mirrors the dominate model of teaching in our schools today.

John Goodlad’s Description of the Grammar of Schooling  

–>The dominant pattern of classroom organization is whole group instruction where the goal of the teachers is to maintain orderly relationships among 20 or 30 more students in a small space.
–>Students generally work alone within a group setting.
–>The teacher is the central figure in determining all classroom decisions—class organization, choice of material and instructional procedures.
—>Teacher spends most of their time in front of the class talking to students. The remainder of time is spent monitoring students’ seatwork or conducting quizzes or tests.
–>Rarely are students actively engaged in learning directly from another or initiating processes of interaction with teachers.
–>Rarely do teachers praise students or provide feedback on students’ performance.
–>Students generally engage in a narrow range of classroom activities—listening to teachers, writing answers to questions, and taking tests and quizzes. Students receive relatively little exposure to audio-visual aids, field trips, guest lectures, role-playing, manipulation of materials, or hands-on activities.
–>The subjects students like most involved drawing, making, shaping, moving, and interacting. These subjects were regarded as the easiest and least important.
–>There was strong evidence of students not having time to finish their lessons or not understanding what the teachers wanted them to do.
–>A significant number of students felt that they were not getting sufficient teacher help with mistakes and difficulties.
–>In social studies classes (where you would expect a great deal of discussion) 90% of instruction involved zero discussion. In the remaining 10% discussion lasted on average for 31 seconds.
–>Teachers who claim they are leading discussions, are, when observed, often leading recitations.

Why Has School Reform Failed?

by Alan Jones

“The hurricane whips up twenty-foot high waves, agitating the surface of the ocean, yet fathoms below the surface fish and plant life go undisturbed by the uproar on the ocean’s surface.”

(School Reform Metaphors: The Pendulum and Hurricane

Larry Cuban (2020)

      In my previous blog, I described the reasons why curricular reform in schools has failed to dislodge the college-bound curricula adopted at the turn of the century. In this blog, I will describe the reasons why comprehensive school reform (CSR) has failed to gain traction in our nation’s schools. The opening quote to this blog is an apt metaphor for the comings and goings of school reform mandates. Each year, a new CSR agitates main office inboxes, but, rarely, if ever, do these yearly reform hurricanes disturb the organizational systems and classroom routines that surround school offices. What follows is a summary of why the deep structure of schooling goes undisturbed by the reform uproar in main offices.

      No Implementing Agents:

      Although all of the proposed comprehensive school reform initiatives have been well researched and do offer sounder methods for teaching and learning, all of these initiatives are composed of theories, ideas, practices, and vocabularies that are foreign to administrators and teachers. For a school reform initiative to disturb established classroom teaching routines, administrators must make sense of, interpret, and provide the organizational infrastructure to accommodate the theories, ideas, practices, and vocabularies of a new school reform mandate. Most administrators, however, view the implementation of a school reform mandate as merely a managerial task—the distribution of materials, scheduling workshops, and recording outcomes of accountability benchmarks. Even if an administrator understands the worth of new approaches to teaching and learning, most lack the prior knowledge and teaching ability to effectively convey the theories, ideas, practices, and vocabularies to their faculty.

      All Reforms are Local

      All comprehensive school reform initiatives take a one-size-fits-all approach. In reality, all districts come from somewhere, with distinct histories and cultures. From the outside looking in, all schools appear to same. Inside faculty lodges, main offices, and classrooms, however, there exist local contexts and unique circumstances that local agents—administrators—must first notice, then frame, interpret, and construct meaning for policy messages. What this process looks like in practice is administrators adopting parts of the policy message, adapting other parts of the policy message, and discarding other parts of the policy message. The outcome of this reauthoring process is a policy message that leaves theories largely intact but has reauthored practices to accommodate the diverse demographics, resources, and challenges of different districts.

      Teacher Prior Beliefs

      For most teachers, schools have worked well for them. They sat quietly, listened to lectures, took notes, completed worksheets, completed daily homework assignments, did well on Friday’s test, and earned top scores. This solid academic track record translated into continued success in college. Governmental or board mandates that run counter to how teachers were taught will interfere with their ability to interpret and implement the reform in ways consistent with the designer’s intent. Fundamental conceptual change requiring restructuring of existing knowledge is extremely difficult. Dramatic changes are rare. Teachers will adapt knowledge or practices to what they already believe or do in the classroom. They will not explore a full understanding of theory or practice, but instead will adopt those parts that make sense to them. The result of this reauthoring process is the misrepresentation of theories and practices in the classroom.

      The Lack of Expertise

      While teachers and administrators often see themselves as experts in their field, many fall short of meeting the three essential criteria that define a true expert:

  1. Experts build a knowledge structure that encompasses more diverse cases and is organized around deeper principles.
  2. Experts see deeper patterns in problem situations.
  3. Experts are less likely to be distracted by similarities that are only superficial—to lose the forest in the trees.

      It should be noted that most administrators are experts at managing a school: buses arrive on time; classrooms are fully staffed with certified teachers; curricular materials have been distributed; budgets are balanced. Most school administrators, however, fail to develop the expertise to achieve the following educational goals written into most school mission statements: Moving beyond test preparation to deep, transferable learning.

  • Creating a culture of curiosity rather than compliance;
  • Modeling adult learning.
  • Training staff to integrate social-emotional learning intentionally;
  • Connecting global issues to local contexts in a practical way;
  • Moving beyond scripted curricula to project-based and inquiry learning;
  • Integrating technology meaningfully rather than as add-ons.

      The Organizational Context of Schooling

      The “egg carton” structure of schools creates an organizational structure that prevents teachers from interacting with their colleagues and undermines opportunities for teachers to test or be exposed to alternative understandings of policy. A true learning organization creates spaces and time for interdisciplinary learning and collaboration. To be sure, schools organized around separate, distinct subjects divided into fixed periods are easy to manage, but serve as a firewall to the very goals schools claim in their mission statements.

      The Educational Deep State

      The world of educational consultants, textbook manufacturers, and professional organizations often claims they are advancing the goals in school mission statements. In practice, however, this deep state of consultants, publishers, and professional organizations reinforces the existing structure of schooling and the “deep state of teaching” rather than challenging the centuries old grammar of schooling.

      Substantive Change is Difficult

      It is one thing to ask a teacher to make minor changes to their classroom teaching practices: swapping one textbook for another, adding tech integration, sending teachers to workshops. It is quite another to ask a teacher to rethink the design of learning itself. Asking a teacher to unlearn the practices associated with teaching isolated subject instruction and master the practices of inquiry-based learning is a cognitive shift that most teachers would be unwilling or unable to make.

      The Fundamental Questions of School Reform

      Although the list of barriers to school reform is formidable, they are not insurmountable. Many of my blogs provide a road map for challenging structures and beliefs, and begin the journey to align daily practice with the values and aspirations written into their mission statements. Before beginning that journey, however, administrators should personally answer for themselves the following fundamental questions of school reform:

  • Why would I do it?
  • What does “it” look like, and which elements, practices, and processes are necessary and sufficient ingredients for “it?”
  • What are the necessary conditions, both inside and outside the schools and in the broader education systems, for “it” to happen?
  • If you did “it”, would it “work?”
  • How do you sustain and continuously improve “it?”

Why Has Curriculum Reform Failed?

by Alan Jones

      For the last two decades, every President in the White House has offered up a school reform initiative. The continual call for school reform is based on the belief that the blame for the low achievement scores of students in this nation lies squarely in schools that are poorly run and poorly staffed. While it is an oversimplification to place the blame for poor student achievement on poor school management, the fact remains that over the last decade, the focus of school reform legislation has been on improving academic standards, enhancing teacher quality and support, and holding schools accountable for student performance.

      What has been missing from the school reform agenda is any talk of the role the school curriculum plays in student achievement. The assumption made by lawmakers, school administrators, and teachers is that the subject-centered curriculum designed around academic course offerings is the gold standard. Over time, schools have expanded their course offerings by introducing electives to enhance student engagement. These additions, however, are just that: additions. They are not intended to subtract subjects from the core curriculum, reorganize course offerings, or rewrite course offerings. The standardized college-bound curriculum authored by the Committee of 10 in 1892 still remains the gold standard.

      Although there have been a number of reports and research studies that have questioned the worth and teachability of the subject-centered college-bound curriculum, it still remains the mainstay of all schools in this nation. The question remains: Why is a curriculum designed in 1892 still in its original form in a nation and world where global economies are demanding habits of thought and occupational skills that no longer align well with the college-bound subject subject-centered curriculum? The following outlines the six major barriers to school curriculum reform:

      Conflicting Goals

      All school mission statements write goals that fall into the following four categories: civic, vocational, cultivating humanity, self self-development. Putting aside the conflicts each goal has with the other goals, the organization of these goals into a coherent approach to teaching and learning is an impossible undertaking. Schools have solved this dilemma by mandating that all students fill their schedules with the sequence of courses from the core curriculum—the 1892 academic college preparatory course offerings—and, if space in a student’s schedule is left open they are free to sprinkle in elective course offerings that nibble around the edges of civic responsibilities, developing personal interests, or examining the human condition.

      Credentialing

      At the turn of the century, a group of reform-minded Superintendents aimed to reform schools by applying principles of efficiency and scientific management. They transformed the personalization of the one-room schoolhouse into an institutional school system whose goal was to standardize course offerings, time allocated for each course offering, and the awarding of credits for completion of each course. For over a century have been more focused on sifting and sorting students within these bureaucratic mazes rather than enhancing learning.

      The 1892 Curriculum Works

      Middle- and upper-class parents feel that the college-bound academic curriculum works for their sons and daughters. Any dramatic changes to the 1892 college-bound curriculum would pose a threat to powerful groups of parents who sent their children to college.

      What real schooling looks like

      As a Superintendent commented to me after a proposed interdisciplinary program was opposed by various parent groups: “Well, Al, nice presentation, but you know, everyone has been to third grade.” He meant by this comment that all parents have experienced institutional schooling. And yes, when you gather at reunion parties, the institutional model of schooling—seven periods, subjects, credits, Friday’s test— is disparaged by most. But, all would agree that this is how a school should look, and this is how school should be conducted.

      What real teaching looks like

      Teachers, like their parent counterparts, sat for many hours in desks, lined up in rows, and with a teacher in front of the room transmitting large amounts of facts, methods, and distributing Friday’s test. Most teachers believe that students should be taught like they were taught. So they define curriculum by textbooks, disconnected categories of knowledge, and academic exercises—the ten end-of-the-chapter questions.

      Organizational Convenience

      It is convenient to have a curriculum that focuses on academic subjects, which are aligned with the university discipline. It is convenient to have a differentiated curriculum, which allows teachers to specialize. It is convenient to structure a high school around a core curriculum that simplifies curriculum planning and the documentation of student progress.

      No Cognitive Infrastructure

      All the barriers to school reform are formidable; they are not insurmountable. What has held these barriers in place for over a century is the lack of counter-narratives, vocabularies, and messengers. The narratives and vocabularies now in place revolve around institutional goals and practices—credentialing, standardization, accountability, compartmentalization—rather than creating learning environments that are lively, challenging, and intellectually engaging.

      Although a group of progressive educators at the turn of the century developed narratives and vocabularies that challenged institutional goals and values, the quest for organizational certainty in schooling all but erased these narratives and vocabularies from the educational landscape. The fatal blow, however, to the erasure of progressive vocabularies and narratives from the educational landscape was largely the fault of school administrators unschooled in the theories, ideas, vocabularies, and narratives developed over a century ago by the likes of John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Francis Parker, and William Heard Kilpatrick.

      Even if a school administrator came across these narratives and vocabularies in their administrative training, the managerial tools taught in these courses, along with the institutional systems already in place in their schools, would offer school administrators little opportunity or incentive to pursue progressive approaches to teaching and learning. Without agents willing and able to articulate alternative models of schooling, students brought up in a Google information environment will remain stuck in a Gutenberg era curriculum.

So…if not mission statements or strategic plans, then what???

by Alan Jones

In previous blogs, I argued that school administrators and boards of education should reconsider the practice of writing mission statements and strategic plans. Instead of three retreats with posted notes decorating motel conference room walls, administrators and board members should follow Warren Buffett’s three rules in investing—what he terms, “the value of simplicity.”

      In a recent interview, Warren Buffett offered the three rules he follows in investing—what he termed, “the value of simplicity.” Before Superintendents and Boards adjoin to their weekend conference venues to write out their values and plans for the district they should first consider Buffett’s three simple rules for investing.

      Rule #1: What are the fundamentals of schooling

      In the last decade, school districts have bought into private industry’s love of analyzing huge amounts of data. Districts have purchased all manner of software programs to collect data and employed all manner of administrators specializing in the analysis of data. In Buffett’s view, slicing and dicing data—student demographics, attendance, test scores, disciplinary actions, course enrollment, grades—are informative, but miss the essential question that should be asked of school performance: What are the fundamentals of the schools we are governing and how do these fundamentals effects student learning?

      Instead of spending money and time on gathering and analyzing data, school boards, central office administrators, and building-level administrators should spend a week sitting in classrooms in their districts. What they will find, in the words of educational historians is: “The Grammar of Schooling.” The chart below represents two very different “fundamentals” of schooling. The column on the left lists the goals and practices of the “grammar of schooling.” The column on the right lists the goals and practices that are commonly listed in school mission statements. Administrators exiting the classes that have sat in would find that the fundamentals of schooling present the goals and practices listed in the left column—the grammar of schooling.”

 The Grammar of Schooling  Educational Driven Pedagogies
Educational GoalsCover the material  Do the work of the field
Pedagogical Priorities  Breadth  Depth
View of KnowledgeCertain  Uncertain
View of studentsExtrinsically motivated  Creative, curious, and capable
Role of StudentReceiver of knowledge  Creator of knowledge
Role of teacher  Dispenser of knowledgeFacilitator of learning
View of failure  Something to be avoidedCritical to learning
Ethos  ComplianceRigor and Joy

      After the classroom visits, Buffett’s investing model would ask school administrators to take time to learn about the instructional models in their buildings and the impact these models are having on students. Over the last decade, surveys of students’ attitudes towards their schooling experience have expressed a general discontent with the grammar of schooling. If you reduce their comments listed below to one term it would be, “boring.”

  • Monotonous schedules and lack of choice
  • Perceived irrelevance
  • Rote memorization
  • Lack of freedom and autonomy
  • Excessive homework
  • Too much teacher talk

      Rule #2: How are these fundamentals being implemented?

      Now returning to Buffett’s model, he would then ask, “What does the company produce and how does it make money? Translated into school practices, schools are organized around the institutional goals of preparation, acquisition of information, delivery of information, compliance with state standards, accumulation of credits, and scores on standardized tests. The fundamentals of schooling—grades, credits, subjects, tests—the fundamentals that students find boring—are from an administrative standpoint aligned with a school organization that prizes preparation over the expansion of the intellect; acquisition of information over the construction of meaning; delivering of information over facilitating understanding; scores on standardized tests over solutions to authentic problems.

      Rule #3: Are the current goals and organization of schools worth investing in?

      From an administrative standpoint, the answer to the worth of poring money into schooling would be a resounding YES. From the surveys of student experiences and the goals written into school mission statements, the answer would be a resounding NO.

      This divide between the institutional goals listed in district policy and operations manuals and the goals and values listed in school mission statements should be the focus of the discussions at district strategic planning sessions. If conducted honestly and openly, it would become apparent early on in the discussion that the curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that all parents want their sons and daughters to experience in classrooms is being suppressed by a school organization and practices that value the grammar of schooling over the poetry of schooling.

      To follow through on Buffett’s model, schools, as currently designed would not be a wise investment. And, for investment purposes, the model would stop there. For the stakeholders sitting in weekend retreats, however, they could continue with the model by asking the question: “How could we change the fundamentals of schooling to align with the educational goals and practices we have written into our school mission statements?

      I have written six books on the gaps that exist between the grammar of schooling and schools that develop in children and adolescents the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and passion that are promised in their school mission statements. Each book goes into great detail on the what and how of actualizing these values in school classrooms. For school administrations and governing boards to close the gap between the grammar and, what I will term, the poetry of schooling, they should refrain from writing mission statements and strategic plans, and instead, spend the time at the weekend retreat studying the fundamentals of schooling they are sending their sons and daughters to and committing to plans, not a strategic plan, but, a plan listing specific organizational and administrative changes and initiatives that remake our schools into wise investments.

“Mr. Jones, You Make an Excellent Shylock”

by Alan Jones

     In my junior year in high school, I enrolled in a course titled “World Literature.” When I walked into the class on the first day, I expected to be handed a huge tome filled with authors from all regions of the world—Africa, East and South Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and North America/Europe. Although I was certainly no authority on great literature, some authors I expected to read were Homer, Dante, Chaucer, Dickens, Orwell, Austin, and Shakespeare.

      I sat at my desk, inspecting the room. What caught my attention were large posters announcing various Shakespearean plays, a model of a theatre, and the teacher’s name written on the chalkboard, “Miss Steinberg.” What was missing from the class was the treaded book cart.

      The second bell rang, and in walked Miss Steinberg. What struck me about her appearance was the large black horned claws that seemed too large for a petite-framed woman. Her hair, which was pitch black, was pulled back in a bun. She was wearing a well-tailored suit with no jewelry. Miss Steinberg’s appearance and professional manner left me with the impression that this class was all business. Her introductory comments doubled down on my overall impression and left all of us in class wondering what we had gotten ourselves into:

“Good morning, class. My name is Miss Steinberg. Before going into detail on the goals and expectations for this class, I want you to understand that the title of this course, World Literature, is a misnomer. The only world author we will be studying is William Shakespeare. I will not go into my efforts to convince the administration to change the name of the course. But, be that as it may, I wanted to be forthright with you about the works you will be studying. As you have probably noticed, the room has no textbook cart. Our department’s textbook inventory does not have all the works of Shakespeare. So, I will provide paperback versions of Shakespeare’s plays at a minimum cost. Before leaving class, pick up the reading list from the front counter.

      Miss Steinberg then launched into a description of Elizabethan England. Her dramatic descriptions of royalty, poverty, plagues, and wars that shaped Shakespeare’s worldview placed me in a trance-like state—so trance-like that I did not hear the passing bell go off.

      As we were leaving the class, Mrs. Steinberg informed us that there were openings in other literature classes if we wanted to drop the class. Several students I walked down the hallway with announced they were dropping the class. In the words of one of them: “There is no way I am spending a year reading all of Shakespeare’s plays. Besides, Steinberg is no joke. I can’t afford a C or D on my transcripts.”

      There was no doubt in my mind that Mrs. Steinberg was no joke. I also had reservations about reading all of Shakespeare’s plays. There was something, however, about Mrs. Steinberg’s intellect and obvious love of Shakespeare that compelled me to remain in the class. It turned out that the year I spent journeying with Mrs. Steinberg’s Shakespearean adventure was pivotal in deciding to become a teacher and how teaching should be conducted. It was not so much the particular teaching methodologies employed by Mrs. Steinberg that made each period pass by so quickly. Rather, it was her enthusiasm for questioning the behaviors and motivations of the characters that Shakespeare wrote about.

       I can still hear her call out at the top of her voice: “Mr. Jones, what do we have going on here?” What transpired next was not a literal interpretation of a character’s statement but a series of questions or comments from Miss Steinberg that asked me to grapple with characters coming face to face with their failings or pursuing power at the expense of others. There was no hint in these discussions of connections between Shakespearean themes and the politics of the day. However, I often left class seeing parallels between political figures we studied in history and family dinner conversations.

      Aside from Miss Steinberg’s ability to incite doubt and stimulate the imaginations in adolescent minds, the usual trapping of institutional schooling—grades, quizzes, tests, papers— was never brought up. We were required to keep a journal that recorded our responses to prompts posed by Miss Steinberg or an open-ended question about what we were discussing. We were critiqued on our performance in different activity structures: debates over character motivations, creating modern adaptations, role-playing scenes, and watching film interpretations.

      The critiques, however, were never the usual deficit-based model we all experienced in other classes. Miss Steinberg never made a judgmental statement focusing on what was wrong or lacking. Instead, she had the uncanny ability to focus on what was working for us and how we could augment what was working for us. She also possessed the rare skill of knowing when a particular activity structure was uncomfortable for the class. In these instances, she had a way of moving to a different activity without signaling that an individual or class was in over its head.

      Although I was proud to receive an A in the class, what meant more to me than the A, was a comment made to me when she passed me in the hallway: “Mr. Jones, you make an excellent Shylock.” In addition to being an excellent Shylock, the other educational gift I received in the class, one which I only realized later in life, was being introduced to vocabularies and ways of thinking that allowed me to step away from my parent’s vocabularies and ways of thinking into a self-authoring individual. No, I did not leave the class rebelling against my parents. I did leave that class with a questioning mind. A mind that all school mission statements profess to be a goal, but are rarely practiced in classrooms or school offices.